We three stared at the Chief across the metal desk for a moment before I broke the silence.
"But it's incredible!" I exclaimed. "You must be mistaken, sir-nothing in the galaxy could cause a thing like that!"
Jhul Din and Korus Kan nodded in agreement beside me, but the Chief of the Interstellar Patrol shook his head.
"Yet something in the galaxy is causing it, Dur Nal," he said. "I tell you that this thing has taken thousands of interstellar ships in the last few days without giving us any clue to its cause!"
Slowly I shook my head. "I don't doubt what you say, sir," I told him, "but it seems impossible."
The four of us were sitting in a small metal-walled room through whose window came the red light of mighty Betelgeuse, the sun upon one of whose planets we were. The room was part of the Betelgeuse headquarters of the Interstellar Patrol, and to it but hours before from the great central headquarters at Canopus had come Lacq Larus, Chief of the Patrol. His first act had been to summon our cruiser, which had been patrolling off Betelgeuse, and he sat considering us now, a great plant-man of Capella whose strange green fibrous body was tense and whose green-pupiled eyes were unmoving as he faced us.
Jhul Din and Korus Kan and I sat across the desk from him. Jhul Din was of Spica, a big powerful crustacean-man, his strong body armored in black shell, his quick eyes protruding. Korus Kan, of Antares, was typical of that star's races, his upright man-like body being of metal, with lens-like eyes, a tireless body-machine in which his living brain was cased. I, Earth-man, completed the trio, and though the members of the Interstellar Patrol are from every peopled sun no stranger three in appearance could have been found in it.
Lacq Larus had been looking thoughtfully out of the window across the teeming world of Betelgeusans outside, but turned and again faced us. "I will explain to you the whole situation," he said, "for it's imperative that you three understand it.
"As you know, our galaxy is a great swarm of suns floating in the vast gulf of space, each with its own worlds and peoples. All. of course, are ruled by the Federation of Suns, and all are policed by our own Interstellar Patrol. Back and forth between these suns has gone the galaxy's interstellar commerce for ages, countless thousands of great space-ships plying from sun to sun without hindrance. But now at last this great commerce of the galaxy is threatened with disaster!
"That threat lies in what we have always known as the cosmic cloud, a vast cloud of utter darkness that lies, as you know, near the galaxy's center. It has always lain there, a tremendous area of utter blackness billions of miles in extent, and of it our scientists have been able to say with certainty only that it is a tremendous region where the light-vibrations are simply non-existent.
"More than that none could say, for no ship can venture into that region without plunging into absolute lightlessness, so that none knows what may lie inside. It is true that some years ago one of the galaxy's scientists, Zat Zanat by name, ventured into the cloud to explore it in a ship with some assistants, having some new theory concerning it which he wished to test. But this scientist, one of the scientists of the sun of Deneb, never emerged from it and without doubt met death in it as many luckless ships in the past have done.
"None other has ever desired to penetrate into the great cloud and the galaxy's interstellar ships have always routed their course far around it, to escape the danger. But suddenly, a few days ago, hundreds of ships passing near the great cloud in space were drawn abruptly into it by some titanic and irresistible force. Their calls for help came to our distance-phones and a score of cruisers of the Patrol were rushed to the cloud's edge to investigate. But they found that the unfortunate swarms of ships had vanished inside it by then, their calls ceasing soon after, and there was no trace of what force had whirled them in!
"Instantly warnings were broadcast to all interstellar ships to avoid the neighborhood of the cloud. The cruisers of the Patrol then reconnoitered completely around it for more than a day, finding nothing unusual. At last we were convinced that it was some great ether-disturbance that had whirled the luckless ships inside, and orders were given that the space-lanes around the cloud were again safe. Yet the interstellar traffic had been streaming around it for no more than a few hours when the thing was repeated, and more than a thousand other great ships were drawn with terrific power and swiftness into the great blackness.
"Again all traffic around the cloud was suspended and again a squadron of Interstellar Patrol cruisers flashed to the scene. But they found nothing more this time, no sign of what had caused the great disaster. For two days we waited, though, but the cruisers there reported all as usual. So with some misgivings we yielded to the clamor from the galaxy's suns and allowed the ships again to route their course around the great blackness. A day passed without mishap and we began to breathe easier. And then the thing struck again, and again, but hours ago, more than a thousand ships with all inside them were whirled into the great cloud's darkness.
"This third disaster has caused something like a panic across the galaxy. All realize now that interstellar traffic around the cloud must be suspended until the thing is cleared up, and since the cloud lies almost at the galaxy's center that means the crippling of our interstellar commerce. Always, in time of great peril, the galaxy's peoples have turned to the Interstellar Patrol to save them. They are turning to us now to bring an end to this great threat, and we of the Patrol must not fail them."
Lacq Larus halted for a moment and as he did so the three of us were on our feet.
"When do we start for the cloud, sir?" asked Jhul Din quietly.
The Chief smiled. "You have guessed it," he said. "I have summoned you here to Betelgeuse, have come here from Canopus to meet you because it is on you three that I now rely. You, Dur Nal and Korus Kan and Jhul Din, saved all this galaxy once, when you dared outside our universe to other universes to thwart those who would have loosed death on us.
"I am asking you, therefore, to dare again for the galaxy, to endeavor to find what force it is that has whirled those thousands of ships into the blackness of the cosmic cloud. I dare not send a number of cruisers there, for all may be lost like the others. I do not even give you an order to go, for it means certain death if that force manifests itself again and draws you into the cloud. But if you can explore around its edges you may be able with your recording-instruments to find out what great ether-disturbance or unknown force it is that has caused these terrible calamities, may save the galaxy from greater ones. I say again though that it is not an order. If you, Dur Nal and your two lieutenants wish to go in your cruiser it is well, but if you do not wish to you need not. What say you?"
He was looking at me fixedly, but my eyes were on the time-dial on my wrist.
"We should reach the cloud's edge within ten hours," was all I said.
* * *
Minutes later our cruiser was slanting up at mounting speed from that swarming world of Betelgeusans, our crew rushing about its throbbing generators and Korus Kan and Jhul Din and I in its pilot room. With Korus Kan at the wheel the long ship rose through the glare of the great crimson sun and threaded through the masses of interstellar shipping until it was speeding through the black gloom of space, with all about us the shining hosts of the galaxy's suns.
Far ahead there stood out against the farther stars what seemed a small black spot in the galaxy's star-swarm. It was, we knew, the colossal cosmic cloud of darkness absolute into which thousands of ships had been drawn to some strange fate, and whose secret, if secret there were, we must discover. With the cruiser's hull quivering slightly and with the generators beneath talking louder we hurtled at thousands of light-speeds across the galaxy toward that lightless region.
Hour upon hour our cruiser flew like a thing of thought through the vast spaces toward the cloud. At the highest speed safe to use inside the galaxy we were traveling, and as we drew nearer the cloud's edge our space-chart showed that no other ships were in space about us now, all avoiding the cloud's strange menace. But our own craft hurtled steadily on, and steadily the vast region of blackness grew greater in the firmament before us.
In the cruiser's instrument room Jhul Din and I prepared the intricate recording-instruments on which the success of our venture depended. These were mechanisms connected to various indicators outside the hull, which recorded all ether-currents and drifts and disturbances around the ship, all electrical or radioactive or other forces, and all conditions of temperature and pressure.
If it was really some unheard-of and recurring force or some tremendous ether-disturbance that had swept the luckless ships into the cloud, we should be able to determine its nature and source with these aids.
From the instrument room's window Jhul Din and I watched the great cloud largen as we neared it. It seemed soon like a colossal black curtain across the universe, blotting half the galaxy's suns from sight, stretching across billions of miles. What mysteries did that vast and enigmatic region of lightlessness contain?
At last Korus Kan's voice came down through the order-phone from the pilot room. "We're within two million miles of the cloud's edge," he reported. "What orders?"
"Turn right and coast at a hundred light-speeds along its edge," I told him. "Jhul Din and I will start our observations, and I'll let you know when to change course or speed."
He assented briefly, and in the next moment we saw through the window that the gigantic black curtain of the cloud was sliding sidewise as our cruiser turned in space to coast along its edge. At once Jhul Din and I began our work. Bending over the dials of the recording-instruments, the Spican and I made quick readings as the ship moved on.
All ether-conditions outside the cruiser seemed normal, however, with no strong currents or maelstroms anywhere near us. Nor were our other instruments more enlightening, for none registered any unusual force. For more than an hour, while Korus Kan held the cruiser in a steady course along the cloud's edge, we kept to our watch of the dials, but with no greater result.
I turned from the instruments to the window, shaking my head. "I'm afraid it's useless, Jhul Din," I said. "It never was but a slender chance that we might find anything this way, and I'm afraid it has failed."
He looked thoughtfully with me toward the vast black wall of darkness. "Yet it's our one chance to learn anything," he said. "It may be that on the cloud's other side we could discover something."
"We'll have to try it, but I don't place much faith in it," I told him. "Whatever it is about the cloud has caused those-"
With stunning force I was hurled slantwise across the instrument room to strike in one of its corners, Jhul Din flung with me. The next instant saw the room's walls spinning madly around us and rattling us inside them like peas in a box. There were hoarse cries from the generator rooms and a wild uproar through all the cruiser as with awful speed and force it was whirled over and over.
Bruised and half dazed, I retained enough presence of mind to clutch at the rail of the pilot room stair as I was thrown against it, and as Jhul Din was flung past me a moment later I grasped and held his arm. Together we struggled up into the pilot room, where we glimpsed Korus Kan clinging to the wheel-standard as the room gyrated about him.
"The cloud!" he cried. "It's the force they told us of-it's drawing us into the cloud!"
"Into the cloud!"
The cold of outside space seemed about us in the fear that for a moment held us, for as we looked from the windows of the whirling pilot room we saw instantly that the Antarian was right. Our cruiser was hurtling at tremendous speed straight toward the vast region of darkness we had been coasting.
"Turn on full power!" I cried. "Try to bring the ship out of this, Korus Kan!"
"I can't!" he shouted back. "I've got every generator on full but the cruiser doesn't obey its wheel! It's some colossal magnet or magnetic force inside the cloud that's drawing us!"
With every instant the tremendous wall of blackness, as sharply defined as though material, was looming closer before our whirling ship. While Korus Kan worked frantically with the controls, and while the cries of our astounded crew came up to us from beneath, I seized the distance-phone, in the hope of flashing word at least to others in the galaxy of the nature of the force that had seized us. But the distance-phone was going dead, affected by the magnetic force that was drawing us to doom!
By then the great cloud was an appalling sight ahead of us, a vast maw of darkness into which our cruiser was racing at tremendous velocity. The ship's whirling had subsided somewhat and I yelled to Korus Kan to make a last trial of its power. He strained the generators to the breaking-point in the next moment, but it was useless, for nothing could escape the relentless grip of the power that was drawing us on.
Another moment and the blackness was walling the firmament directly before our plunging ship. Something made me turn round at that moment to glance back toward the galaxy's shining suns as though for a last look, and then even as I turned round again we were plunged into a darkness to which the darkest night would have been as noonday, an utter blackness in which no faintest ray of light existed!
I groped in the darkness for the switch of the cruiser's inside lights but though it clicked beneath my fingers there came no answering illumination. Light could not exist in this terrible region! And the quivering of the cruiser about us told us that still at immense speed we were being drawn in toward the cosmic cloud's heart.
On and on we rushed through that shrouding night, Jhul Din and Korus Kan and I bracing ourselves in the pilot room with our hands upon each other's shoulders, facing ahead as though to look through this utter blackness which no eye could pierce. I think now that in those terrible moments the three of us were but waiting in tacit silence for the end. Even were the cruiser to free itself of the deadly force that gripped it we could never now win out of this lightless region in which we would wander blindly.
Still on toward the mighty cloud's heart raced the ship, and to me it seemed that we must be very near its center. A tense expectation of the end held all of us now. But abruptly we cried out together as there came a mounting, hissing sound from outside the cruiser. Our craft was rushing now through air, through an atmosphere!
At the same moment we were aware that it was slowing its tremendous speed, that the mighty magnetic force that had drawn us inward appeared to have vanished. The stunning wonder of the two things occupied us for the moment to the exclusion of all else. Was there a world then here at the cosmic cloud's heart, through whose atmosphere our ship was now moving?
Suddenly my heart stood still as there came a slight jar against our cruiser's side, followed by a succession of flopping sounds upon the ship's top. There was silence for a brief instant while we listened tensely in the utter darkness of the pilot room, and then came a clang of metal against the cruiser's top, and the hiss of some strange force.
"It's some other ship outside!" I cried. "And they're trying to get in-they're boarding us!"
"The top space-door!" Jhul Din shouted. "They're getting in there!" For the clang of the door opening came to our ears at that moment and a flood of cold air from outside rushed through the cruiser.
"Up to the space-door, then!" I yelled. "Hold it against them, whoever they are!"
As we cried out we were bursting out of the pilot room, bumping against walls and doors in the unrelieved darkness, rushing toward the corridor into which that upper space-door opened. I heard the shouts of the crew as they too blindly hastened upward, and then as I burst into the corridor I sought I collided squarely in the darkness with something. Something that was tall and bulky and that felt like cold flesh to my touch. Instantly two great flap-like limbs or arms from it were grasping me.
I struck out in the dark with sudden frenzied horror, but as I knocked the unearthly thing from me others were about me, pouring down into the corridor from the space-door above, from outside the ship. They were all about us, in groups, scores, gripping me and Korus Kan and Jhul Din and all our crew, while we struck out blindly against them.
* * *
I have fought the dread serpent-creatures in the hall of the living dead, and I have had a part in the tremendous combat of three universes, but never yet did I take part in a more terrible struggle than that one. For it was a struggle in a darkness so absolute that we could have no slightest glimpse of the creatures we fought, knowing by touch only that they were things such as we had never come into contact with before.
They were calling in flute-like tones to one another as their powerful flap-arms caught and held us, tones oddly incongruous with the wild uproar of the battle. They seemed to move as easily in the utter darkness as we might do in light, and this fact gave them a tremendous advantage over us. Because of that our wild struggle had in moments been quelled, and as I was held tightly by two of the things I heard the calls of my friends to me and realized that all of us had been overpowered. These creatures of darkness had captured our ship!
Still holding us, they herded us toward one end of the corridor, and then released us. Amazed, I took a step through the darkness toward one of the corridor's doors. But in an instant I had halted, for through the darkness a buzzing sound came to me and at the same time fiery, tearing pain ran through every nerve in my body. I staggered back, and the buzzing ceasing, the pain ended. Jhul Din and Korus Kan, who had thought to escape also in the darkness, had experienced the same thing, staggering back with me.
It was evident that our strange captors were aware in some way of every move we made in the darkness, and that the buzzing was of some pain-producing weapon of theirs. Later we were to learn that it was one that set up electrical pain-currents in the nervous system. Pain is but a sensation or electrical current in a certain nerve, and this strange weapon was one that by induction set up pain-currents of more or less intensity in every nerve in the body.
It was evident that we could not escape them in the darkness, so we remained grouped at the corridor's end. We heard the flute-like voices of the things calling to one another through the cruiser, and in a moment or so more came the throbbing of its generators again and the hiss of air outside as it began to move. In awe we listened.
"What can they be?" whispered Korus Kan. "Creatures of darkness-creatures of the cosmic cloud who move in its darkness as though in light!"
"There must be a world here," I answered, "through whose atmosphere we're moving now. They've come up from it to capture our ship and must be taking us down to its surface now."
"But a world in this perpetual darkness? How are they able to live-to move?"
"Who can say? Whatever they are, it is clear that they have pulled the thousands of the galaxy's ships into the cloud as they did ours, for their own reasons. I wonder what fate the other ships met."
* * *
Minutes passed while the cruiser throbbed through the darkness; then its speed decreased quickly and with a slight jar landed upon a solid surface. At once the doors that had been closed were clanging open again and the flute-voiced creatures of darkness, using their pain-producing weapons to control us, were herding us out of the corridor and through the space-door to emerge upon a solid, smooth-paved surface. All about us was still darkness absolute but we felt ourselves in open air, on the surface of a world of unending darkness here at the cosmic cloud's heart.
Our captors began to march us forward. We moved blindly, controlled by their touches or pushes. We heard a great babel of flute-voices, of innumerable creatures coming and going around us. Reaching my hand forth occasionally I ascertained that we were marching along a series of smooth-walled and wide-doored buildings. From their doors came sometimes the clash and clang of machinery operating inside, while in and out of others were swarming hordes of flute-voiced creatures, their flopping steps sounding all around us.
It was evident that we were being taken through a city-a city of darkness absolute in which these creatures of darkness came and went as we of light would do in our own sunlit cities.
I began to understand, though, as we marched along, how these creatures could move so surely in darkness, and whispered to Korus Kan and Jhul Din that it was by their sense of hearing that they must do so, since it seemed to be entirely by the sound of our footsteps that they controlled and guided us. Yet was it possible that any race of beings could live and flourish thus and raise their cities in the cosmic cloud's darkness with only hearing to aid them?
Twice our captors wheeled our group to right or to left as though following a definite course through the streets of the lightless city. In a few moments more, though, when they touched us with their flap-arms to make us again turn, I misunderstood the touch and took a step to the right instead of the left. Instantly agony shot through my every nerve as a buzzing sounded directly beside me. That agony was so terrible and so unexpected that it made me do what never else would I have done, whirl around and strike through the darkness at the thing behind me with all my frenzied strength.
My clenched fist drove into the cold, bulky body of the thing and I felt it knocked backward by the blow, heard the buzzing cease and felt the pain stop as whatever weapon the thing had held rattled upon the paving. Instantly from the other guards came flute-like cries and the sound of flopping steps rushing toward me through the darkness. I yielded to the first instinct as I heard them and threw myself away from them, running blindly through the darkness as their cries sounded behind me.
There came scuffling sounds and then the buzz of many of their weapons, and as I heard cries of pain I realized that my friends and crew had attempted to break loose also but had been halted by their captors. Then after me through the darkness they were racing with quick, flopping steps.
I ran madly forward, collided with a great creature and then with another, and as I blundered away from them was aware that in this world of perpetual darkness I was at a terrible disadvantage in attempting to escape the creatures of darkness who pursued me. Flute-like cries were sounding all along the street now, it seemed, a babel of shouts of alarm spreading quickly over the city. As I blundered again into a great creature whose flap-arms sought to grasp me I realized that not for long could I elude them in this darkness to which they were accustomed. Again I yielded to instinct, and as I felt beside me a wide door I threw myself through it, crouched motionless just inside it and behind the base of what felt to my touch like a great metal mechanism.
It seemed a great room in which I was, for I heard from far along it through the darkness the humming and clanging of machinery, and also the hurrying steps of many of the creatures of darkness as they left their tasks to answer the alarm of cries in the street outside. Their flapping limbs took them directly past me as they rushed to the door, and I could have reached out in the darkness and touched them. I made no move, scarcely daring to breathe; for though I was but a few feet from them, I felt sure they could become aware of my presence in the darkness only by any sounds that I might make.
I heard them answering in their strange voices utterances of the creatures outside, heard the noise of the alarm gradually receding as those who searched for me moved along the street. I breathed a little easier for a moment, but only for a moment. For as the creatures who had rushed to the door streamed back into the great room two of them halted so close beside me that their bodies actually brushed slightly against my arm.
Motionless as a statue I crouched there in the darkness, as the two conversed in their fluting voices beside me. Were they to move a fraction of an inch nearer they must discover me. Were the slightest sound to come from me my discovery was certain.
At last, after what seemed an eternity of waiting, though it could have been really no more than a few moments, the two passed on, and a kindly providence kept them from brushing nearer me as they went. Soon the activities of the great hall seemed resumed, the humming of its mechanisms coming to me again through the darkness, and the sound of the creatures among them moving from one to another.
The peril of immediate discovery seemed past, but how could I hope to escape for long in this city, this world, of eternal darkness? I could not move through it as the creatures that inhabited it did, as surely as though in day; and to stumble blindly through its streets meant swift discovery. How could I hope to find Korus Kan and Jhul Din and the others in this strange world of which I could see nothing? It seemed that by escaping for a while as I had done from our captors I was but prolonging an agony of spirit that might otherwise have been cut short, at least, by death.
In this desperate situation I strove to order my thoughts.
It was apparent that to remain where I was would be useless, since though I might escape discovery for a short time it would inevitably come. It would be better to make an effort at least, to find the others and the cruiser, even though such an effort would be stamped from the first as hopeless. To attempt to pass through the streets of this city seemed insane, yet to do so held the one slender chance of finding the others; so I summoned all my courage and crept out through the wide door and into the smooth-paved street outside.
There, pausing helplessly in the darkness, I listened intently. From all along the street came the flopping steps of the creatures moving this way or that. It seemed to me that it was along the edges of the street that fewest of the creatures moved; so, hugging the smooth walls of the buildings, I began to creep forward.
As flopping steps approached me though the darkness ahead I halted, for I knew that the sound of my own steps would betray me to the keen hearing of these creatures. In a moment the approaching creature had passed me and again I took up my careful progress forward. Again I halted as there came other steps near me. Slowly I made my way along the street, crouching motionless whenever any of the creatures neared me, praying that they might not collide with me. Blindly I felt my way forward through this city of awful night.
At last I felt myself at the street's end, with no more of the smooth-walled buildings beside me. I seemed emerging into a great open space, across which came a tremendous bustle of activity. I moved out a little into it, crouching every few instants as flopping steps came and went about me, until I struck something like a great smoothly curving wall of metal before me. For an instant I felt of it and then was motionless in amazement, for it took but that instant for me to recognize what was before me. It was a great interstellar ship, like those that plied the galaxy in countless thousands, and like those that had been drawn into this cosmic cloud in thousands!
For a moment astonishment held me to the exclusion of all else. That this before me was one of the thousands of ships that had been drawn into the cloud I could not doubt.
Had all then been captured like our own by these creatures of darkness? What could it mean?
I was aware that a tremendous activity was going on far around and before me, and as I made my way cautiously through the darkness along the hull of the ship I heard a stream of creatures pouring in and out of its space-doors, busy carrying in things of metal that clanked against the doors as they went through them. Avoiding them, I moved to the side and in moments had come to another great interstellar ship that was the center of a similar scene of activity. Evidently there were a great number of them in the open space before me, and as evidently they were being prepared and fitted by these creatures of darkness for some great enterprise. But that enterprise-what could it be?
I stifled the wonder and amazement that were strong in me, though, for I realized that this swarming place was one of the most dangerous I could encounter. It was inevitable that some of the creatures would collide with me in the darkness, if I stayed there long, so reluctantly I crept back toward the street from which I had emerged.
It did not seem that street which I entered again, though, but a narrower one. There were in it fewer of the city's creatures than in the other street, though I heard still the flopping steps of many of them hastening to and from the open space and interstellar ships which I had just left. I started along it, blindly and aimlessly, not knowing whether I was going back in the direction from which I had come, and not caring greatly. For by that time it seemed clear to me that I was destined to wander blindly through the darkness of the city until discovered and captured, so slender seemed any hope that remained to me.
Still I observed all caution, crouching low each time the sound of approaching creatures came to my ears, not moving until they had passed. Once as I flattened myself thus the flap-like limb or foot of the passing thing actually touched my hand, so close did it come to me, but as I did not move the thing passed on.
After feeling through the darkness along this street for perhaps a thousand yards, my greatest worry being to avoid the creatures who emerged suddenly now and then from the doors along it, I was aware of a still narrower street that branched from it. I took this way, and soon realized that in this narrower way were few of the darkness creatures, they taking the broader streets that crossed the city. I met but one or two of the things in several thousand feet of progress along the street, and though it was harder to elude them in the narrower way I began to feel more confidence. It was that confidence that undid me, for as I passed the door of a building without my usual precautions there emerged suddenly from it one of the great creatures who collided squarely with me.
For an instant the thing must have been even more surprised than I was, and before it could realize what had happened I had flung myself upon it, for well I realized that flight would not serve me now.
My hands sought in vain for a hold upon the smooth, cold body, even as its own great flap-like arms wrapped themselves around me. The thing seemed to have no head or neck whatever, and was almost featureless also. But by the merest chance my hands in that first instant fell upon a narrow aperture in the cold flesh of the upper part of the body. Instantly I closed my hand over it, and as a strangled flute-cry came from it I realized that I had found the monster's mouth. Holding tightly to it and encircling its great body with my other arm I wrestled wildly with it there in the darkness of the narrow street as it sought to shake me off.
The strength of its flap-arms was tremendous, but they were impeded by the fact that I had partly pinned them against its body. Yet it was whirling me this way and that with tremendous force, against the walls and paving of the street.
Nothing but choking sounds came from it, though, and I realized that the creature was air-breathing even as I was and that my hold upon its mouth-aperture was throttling it. Desperately I clung to retain the hold, and with a strength as desperate the great thing tried to tear me loose. I knew that a single cry would bring a swarm of the things to the aid of this one, and the knowledge steeled my muscles. The wild threshing of the creature seemed rapidly lessening, and in moments more my strangling hold had done its work and with a few convulsive jerks the monster went limp and dead.
I straightened from it, panting, then froze with renewed terror. Along the narrow street other steps were approaching me, somewhat lighter steps that were moving carefully as though in investigation, halting now and then. As they came level with me they halted again, and I held my breath. But in the next instant came the sound of the steps coming straight toward me!
With something like a cry of despair on my lips I threw myself forward at the approaching one through the darkness. I knew myself discovered, expected, even as I leaped, the flute-like cry that would bring the hordes in the neighboring streets upon me. But to my utter amazement, my hands grasped not another cold and bulky-bodied creature of darkness but a tall, erect man-like form that was making no resistance to me! I felt short, flat bat-like wings behind that body, felt a man-like head with big-beaked countenance, and then felt two muscular arms grasping my shoulders while a voice whispered tensely in my ear in the tongue of the galaxy.
"Quiet!" it whispered. "Another sound will bring them here from the other street!"
"You-" I stammered. "You're from the galaxy outside-you speak its tongue-but how in this darkness-"
"Not now!" the other warned. "I'll explain in a moment, but now we've got to get out of this street and get this dead thing out before it's discovered. Here-this way-"
Moving through the rayless opacity as a man in a dream might move, I felt myself guided by the other back to the body of the thing I had slain. We lifted it between us and my companion went a little along the street until he turned into a narrow aperture between two smooth-walled structures. Into this we cast the bulky body, and then crouched down together by it. The other had moved through the darkness as easily as through light, I had found, and my first whispered words as we crouched together were of his ability to do so.
"Here," he answered, "these disks-upon your eyes-"
As he spoke he was taking from somewhere on his person two flat little disks an inch or so across, one of which he fastened upon each of my eyes by means of vacuum-sucked rims. I uttered an involuntary cry of astonishment; for as I looked through those disks of glass, the utter darkness that had been about me since first we had been drawn into the great cloud gave way instantly to a pulsing violet light that illumined all things around me.
I could see clearly the towering walls of the two buildings between which we crouched, the narrow street outside in which I had had my battle, and my companion also. He was, I saw, in truth a tall bat-winged figure with strong beaked face and intelligent dark eyes, and I recognized him at once as one of the bat-folks who inhabit the worlds of the sun Deneb. Deneb! Thought of it brought flashing back to my mind a thing that the Chief had told us before our start, and I seized my companion's arm.
"Zat Zanat!" I cried. "You're Zat Zanat, the scientist of Deneb who went into the cloud years ago to explore it!"
He nodded. "I am Zat Zanat," he acknowledged, "and years it has been, in truth, since I came into this cosmic cloud, this place of darkness and horror unutterable."
"But it's not darkness to you!" I exclaimed, pointing to the two disks which he wore before his own eyes. "With these you can see in this absolute blackness-though I don't know how."
"I can tell you that soon enough," he said, "but you-how comes it that you were roaming this city of the creatures of darkness?"
Swiftly I explained to him how we had been sent to investigate the drawing in of thousands of the galaxy's ships into the cloud, and how having been drawn into it ourselves we had been captured and brought to this city where I had made my escape. He listened intently, nodding once or twice, and when I had finished asked a question.
"You wandered into one of the great masses of captured interstellar ships they are preparing. But did you guess why they drew those ships into the cloud, for what they are preparing them?"
At my negative his expression grew solemn. "They are preparing those thousands of captured ships, Dur Nal," he said, "for an enterprise that means horror to our galaxy: they are preparing to burst out of the cosmic cloud upon the galaxy in all their numbers and seize our suns and worlds in a conquest of darkness!"
"Of darkness?" I repeated, and he nodded.
"Within hours they leave this world and the cosmic cloud, to pour out into the galaxy, for even as we talk here their great plans are coming to their climax-plans that I have seen them form and carry out in the years I have been here.
"For it is years I have spent on this world of darkness in the great cloud. You have heard how years ago I, Zan Zanat, resolved to do what none ever had done, to explore the cosmic cloud's interior. I knew that light could not exist in it, for its darkness is formed by the meeting of ether-currents which generate etheric vibrations of a frequency that neutralizes all light-vibrations.
"It was my plan to see in the darkness of the cloud by the vibrations beyond light, the ultra-violet vibrations. They were not neutralized, not affected, and I devised certain ray-filter disks or glasses that made the eyes sensitive to the ultra-violet vibrations, and thus showed all things in violet light, since the ultra-violet rays have the same sources as light-rays.
"Equipped with these glasses I and my assistants ventured into the cosmic cloud in our cruiser. Its interior lay in violet light before us, and after cruising in near its center we descried a small planet that hung motionless in it. We landed to explore it and found it inhabited by strange eyeless creatures of darkness who had evolved on it in the ages and who, because they had evolved in utter darkness had no eyes at all but had a hearing so marvelously keen that it served them instead.
"Hardly had we landed on this world when the creatures captured us. They took us before their rulers, who examined us. These eyeless creatures had never imagined that other worlds might lie outside the cloud, nor had they any space-ships. But learning that there were many worlds outside, they began to plan how they might pour out and seize them, for their numbers were cramped on this small world.
"My assistants they slew, but kept me, torturing me with the pain-producing weapons to gain information from me. They saw that they would need thousands of great ships to enable them to pour out on the galaxy, and had not the means of making them soon. They devised, therefore, a way of drawing in the numbers of ships they needed from those coming and going in the galaxy around the cloud.
"This was to increase many times the magnetism of their world. Every world in space is a great magnet with north and south poles, as you know, and they planned to increase the magnetic power of their world thousands of times by a means they knew, which involved the simultaneous electrical charging of both their world's poles.
"They prepared the apparatus at the poles and placed the control of it on the top of the great building of their rulers. When that control was closed the magnetism of this world at the cloud's heart was suddenly intensified thousands of times. Its tremendous power reached out through the cloud and caught great swarms of the interstellar ships passing outside, and drew them swiftly in.
"Had they left the control closed their world would have drawn in those ships to smash in annihilation against it, but just after the helpless ships were drawn into their world's atmosphere the control was opened and the magnetic grip released. Then while the swarms of ships, helpless in the darkness, were in their atmosphere, their own ships they had constructed in small numbers and which they could operate in space by means of reflected electrical-sound vibrations instead of sight-in these ships they went up and boarded and captured the helpless vessels.
"They brought them down to this world's surface, those inside them helpless in the darkness against these people of darkness. Almost all inside the captured ships they slew with the pain-producers, but a few who they thought would be useful to them they saved and prisoned as I was prisoned in the building of the rulers.
"Soon afterward they repeated this process, closing the control and drawing in new swarms of ships from outside the cloud. And again they did the same thing and with the same result. The fourth time they captured but one ship, your own, but this can have made no difference to them, for their first three operations had brought them in thousands of great interstellar ships in which all the eyeless hordes could be contained.
"Already they had almost completed the refitting of these ships, fitting them with their vibration-guiding devices, and also with the mechanisms they will take with them for their conquest of the galaxy. These are mechanisms each of which can destroy all light for a vast space around it by neutralizing the light-vibrations even as is done by natural forces here in the cloud.
"And with these they will conquer the galaxy inevitably. For they need but settle upon a world and with their mechanisms or one of them destroy all light in and around it. Plunged in absolute darkness, its blind peoples will be unable to strike back at the eyeless creatures who, used to darkness and at home in it, can wipe out the others at their leisure with the pain-producers.
"Already their last preparations are being finished, already their hordes streaming toward the waiting masses of interstellar ships. It was that knowledge that made me desperate, and in desperation I managed to escape from the building of the rulers that was my prison. I have kept always with me the ultra-violet sight-glasses, and with a pair of them was able to elude the creatures, hoping to steal a cruiser and get out to the galaxy to warn it. But I could not get near any of the ships, and in going through the city in a vain hope of doing so I saw you battling with and killing that creature and came to you."
* * *
When Zat Zanat had finished his strange tale, I was silent for a moment, gazing out into the narrow violet-lit street beside which we crouched.
"You think then that the only hope is to steal a cruiser and get out of the cloud to warn the galaxy before the attack comes?" I asked.
He nodded quickly. "What other hope is there? Nothing can halt this invasion of theirs, for before an hour more is past, it may well be, their hordes will be pouring out of the cloud in their cruisers. You can hear them making ready now."
"But what of my friends? I can't escape and leave Jhul Din and Korus Kan here, or the others either."
He thought for a moment. "For your cruiser's crew there is no hope." he said, "for the rulers would order them slain at once. If your two friends seemed of any importance, though, there is a chance that they would have been let live for a while, prisoned there in the ruler's building."
"Then it's for us to get them out," I said, and he laughed shortly.
"That's all," he agreed. "Well, one thing seems hardly more hopeless than another, and we may as well try it. But we must get your friends soon if ever, for these creatures of darkness will surely kill their prisoners to the last one before they leave."
We stood up, then ventured cautiously into the narrow street. Looking along its violet-lit length I could see in the broader street that crossed it innumerable dark shapes hastening this way and that. The buildings on each side of the streets were tall rectangular ones a few hundred feet in height, their walls smooth and black like the paving of the streets. They had doors but no windows whatever, seeming like great boxes. It was with an effort that I remembered that in unending darkness there was small need for windows.
Zat Zanat pointed out over the city to a great block-like building that towered above all others, and on whose top I could make out the shapes of resting space-ships.
"The building of the rulers," he whispered. "It's there your friends are, if they still live."
"Lead on, then," I said, and without further words we started down the narrow way.
As we came toward the broader avenue that crossed it we went more carefully, and it was here that I had my first real glimpse of the creatures of darkness with whom I had struggled and from whom and among whom I had fled. They were much as my touching hands had informed me, great upright bodies of dark flesh moving on two flap-like lower limbs and with two similar arms. In the upper part of the body the only features were the small opening of the mouth and great cup-like ears set on each side of it.
As I watched, with something of a recurrence of my former horror, I saw that the creatures seemed to judge all their movements by hearing, avoiding one another when they heard the sound of steps, and avoiding walls and other obstacles evidently by listening to the echo of their own steps. The product of evolution in the unending darkness of the cosmic cloud, hearing meant to them all that sight could mean to children of light.
* * *
Zat Zanat, making a sign of caution to me, stepped forward and led the way across the border street, at a time when the stream of eyeless creatures had lessened. As we approached its other side, though, the approach of two of the monsters bearing a section of machinery between them forced us to halt lest our steps be heard. The two passed but inches from us, and unutterably strange and terrifying it was to stand silent there in the violet-lit street with those creatures flopping past. It took an effort to remember that when we made no sound they could not perceive us.
As we moved on I glanced ahead and back and saw that over all the city as far as the eye could reach, in the violet light which was in reality not light, streams of the creatures were pouring toward great square open spaces in the city where rested the thousands of captured interstellar ships. The last pieces of mechanism were being loaded into these, it seemed, and the monsters themselves were pouring into them. They were on the point of making their start out through the cloud to fall upon the galaxy's worlds!
The sight spurred us forward. Halting now and then and freezing motionless as statues to allow some of the darkness creatures to pass around or near us, we made our way through the streets until we were nearing the great building of the rulers. By then the greater part of the city's hordes had poured toward and into the massed interstellar ships, and because of that we went forward more quickly.
Zat Zanat turned now and then to whisper caution, though, and the third time that he did so I saw his eyes widen suddenly in terror behind his glasses, saw him racing back toward me with arms outstretched. With swift sense of panic I made to whirl around but before I could do so two great flap-arms had closed on me from behind, and in grasping my head knocked loose the glasses from my eyes.
Instantly I was plunged into the most profound darkness, and then as there came a rush of feet was released by the creature that had held me and sent staggering off into the darkness. I heard a terrific struggle going on in the darkness beside me, knew that Zat Zanat and the monster were locked in death-grips, but was helpless to aid my friend in the blindness that was upon me.
Rushing toward the sound of battle I was knocked back and down by a great blow that caught my face. I pawed frantically along the street in search of the glasses I had lost, heard over the scuffle in the dark the sound of Zat Zanat's gasps for breath and a smothered flute-like cry from his antagonist.
Abruptly the sounds of struggle ceased, and somewhere in the darkness a heavy weight thudded against the paving. Which of the two had won? I waited statue-like for the answer until I was grasped by the shoulders, and whirled around in sudden terror. But as I did so a hand was again pressing the eye-disks against my eyes and as the whole scene sprang from deep darkness into violet light once more I saw that it was Zat Zanat, disheveled and panting for breath, and that the other lay dead upon the paving.
"On to the building!" Zat Zanat gasped. "We've but minutes left, I think!"
We sprang forward, running now along the street, for along its whole length we could see none of the eyeless monsters, and were aware with sinking hearts that all or almost all must be already in the waiting ships. Minutes more would see them pouring out of the cloud to spread darkness and doom over the galaxy!
Down the street we ran, careless now of any that might hear, until there loomed at its end before and above us the vast box-like building of the rulers. None of the creatures of darkness could be seen around it, and we sprang toward the great square open door, then halted for an instant despite ourselves.
Far away across the city was sounding a humming as of a gigantic swarm of bees. It was a sound that I knew well and one that drove the blood from my heart. It was the sound of the generators of great space-ships throbbing, and as it sounded there was lifting over the city a mass of hundreds of the gleaming ships!
Away to our right another mass of equal size was rising, and far behind us in the strange city another, and still others at a greater distance from us, thousands of huge interstellar ships loaded with all the eyeless hordes! They were starting out from their world and from the cloud on their career of dread conquest!
"They're starting!" I cried to Zat Zanat. "We're too late!"
"Not yet!" he cried. "Look, there's still a ship waiting on the roof! They must be slaying their prisoners now!"
For on the roof of the great building before us we glimpsed a waiting cruiser that had not yet risen. The significance of it and of Zat Zanat's cry drove home to my brain at the same instant. It was waiting for those in the building, those who were killing the prisoners they had kept there. And Jhul Din and Korus Kan-!
I uttered a cry of rage, leapt forward and through the door with Zat Zanat close behind me. I vaguely glimpsed great halls through which we raced, queer seats and desks and instruments, and then with my companion beside me was leaping up the broad flight of curving steps ahead.
Up it and up another stair we raced, and then my face blanched and I threw myself on at greater speed as from somewhere in the great building over us came shriek on shriek of the most dreadful agony, ending in each case in quick silence but taken up at once by other voices.
"The pain-producers!" Zat Zanat sobbed. "They're slaying the prisoners with them!"
"Jhul Din! Korus Kan!" I cried, madly, and then cried out again as there came to me from above somewhere a faint answering shout. We rushed up into the next level, along a broad corridor, and halted before a solid door from behind which came the cries of my friends.
I threw myself frantically at the door but the secret of its lock defied me, and it was diamond-hard in material. Other shrieks came now from the floor above us, and then as they ended came the flopping steps of the eyeless creatures coming down the stair to finish these their last prisoners.
Zat Zanat jerked me swiftly aside from the door. "Wait!" he commanded, and as I understood his purpose I froze instantly silent and motionless with him.
Down the stair and into the corridor came a half-dozen great eyeless monsters who carried with them funnel-like instruments of metal that I knew were the pain-producers. Their flute-voices sounded as they hastened along the hall toward the door by which we stood. We saw one finger with his flap-hands the mechanism on the door, and then as it swung open two had raised their funnel-like weapons toward the two inside. But it was then that Zat Zanat and I leaped.
A wild chorus of flute-cries went up as we crashed into them, and two sprawled motionless beneath our striking arms before the others could comprehend what was happening. And at the same moment there rushed through the open door Korus Kan and Jhul Din, the Antarian's powerful arms striking right and left and Jhul Din's great voice booming in rage as he laid about him.
Both Korus Kan and Jhul Din, though, were fighting in darkness absolute, not having the ultra-violet light disks that enabled Zat Zanat and me to see, and though five of the eyeless monsters had gone down in the first frenzied moment of the battle the others were turning with incredible speed, perceiving all our movements by hearing, to strike back at us.
* * *
In a moment Korus Kan was down, drawing another of the eyeless things with him. Jhul Din had blindly gripped two of them with his immense arms. Before either Zat Zanat or I could throw ourselves upon the remaining creature, though, he had leaped back from the battle and had raised his funnel-like weapon. A buzzing sound came from it and instantly through all of us in every nerve seared a white-hot agony that seemed to rive our brains asunder.
I was staggering against the wall in that awful torture, and Korus Kan and Jhul Din, though they had killed their opponents, were writhing in agony. I saw the creature holding the weapon coming closer toward us with it, knew that an instant more of that agony meant the death they had dealt their prisoners. But at that moment there took place before my eyes one of the bravest things that ever was looked upon.
Zat Zanat had been nearest the creature when it had turned its weapon on us, and had staggered in that awful agony as we had, but as the thing came closer he straightened as with a terrible effort, summoned by a supreme command of his reeling brain all the power of his tortured muscles, and bounded forward in a single agonized leap that sent him crashing against the monster.
As he struck the creature its weapon was knocked from its grasp, and as the pain that was killing us abruptly ceased we rushed to where the two struggled and in a moment the creature lay dead with the others. We staggered up unsteadily, Zat Zanat handing from his belt pouch ultra-violet glasses to my two friends.
"To the roof!" he cried.
"The roof-that cruiser on it is our one chance to get out of the cloud and warn the galaxy before the attack comes!"
Even as we cried out that, we were bounding up the curving stairs from floor to floor until in a moment more we were bursting out into the broad flat roof of the great building. In a single glance we took in the whole scene. At the roof's center rose a square block that was the center of innumerable branching electrical connections and that bore upon it a great lever-switch or control now open, the control Zat Zanat had described which made of this world a colossal-powered magnet when closed. To one side of the roof rested a long cruiser with no occupants, the ship that had been awaiting the half-dozen creatures who had tarried to slay the prisoners.
But as we burst out into the roof's violet light it was not at these things we were looking but at what was around and above us. The whole city, the whole world around us, were deserted! High above us we made out a tremendous swarm of black spots, which were rapidly diminishing in size as they moved away. They were the thousands of interstellar ships and they were going forth with all the eyeless hordes inside them to the conquest of the galaxy!
"They've started-started out of the cloud! We're too late!"
"Too late!"
The words seemed like tocsins of doom in our ears as we stood there motionless, Jhul Din and Korus Kan and Zat Zanat and I, gazing at the vast armada going out to spread death and destruction across our universe. Never could the galaxy's peoples of light stand against those dread peoples of darkness who would spread darkness before them. Never could we outdistance them even to warn the galaxy of the coming attack. As though petrified we stared after those receding swarms of ships. Too late!
Abruptly our dazed brains became conscious of a strange sound beside us. Zat Zanat was laughing. High and mirthless and hysterical laughter it was; half choking and with his whole body trembling he reeled sidewise across the roof toward the great block at its center. And in the next moment, with the same strange high laughter upon his lips, he had reached up to the big control-switch on the block and with a single motion had closed it, a deep throbbing coming from beneath somewhere as he did so.
We stared at Zat Zanat in frozen silence, saw him swaying toward us, saw him pointing upward with face suddenly twisted, intense. We looked up. The great swarms of diminishing black dots that were the space-ships were still above but they were receding no longer! They seemed growing larger! Something, memory or thought, crashed like thunder through my brain. The control that Zat Zanat had closed! The control that made of this world a magnet of colossal power, and that the creatures of darkness had used to draw into the cloud those thousands of ships! And it was closed now!
"The ships!" Jhul Din cried madly. "They're being drawn back to this world!"
"Drawn back-and they're crashing-crashing!"
For we but glimpsed the thousands of mighty ships growing greater above us with terrific speed, whirling back broadside in utter confusion and broken masses, when with a prolonged roar of thundering crashes they were smashing into the surface of the mighty magnet-world that had drawn them back! The planet's surface shook and rolled beneath the gigantic simultaneous concussion of those vast swarms of vessels that it had drawn back with awful force toward it, and as we were flung from our feet the world seemed riven by the vast metal masses crashing at terrible speed into it, none striking the roof on which we were only by grace of the fact that none had been directly over us.
For a terrible moment the giant thunder-roll of the crashing ships split the air about us, and then as it lessened, the swaying of the building beneath us subsided and we staggered to our feet.
Around us lay a world of annihilation and death, its surface, save for an unharmed building here and there like our own, but one vast plain of wreckage! The wreckage of the thousands of ships that would have spread horror and death over all the galaxy; the wreckage that held the dead and broken hordes of all the eyeless creatures; the wreckage that marked the annihilation of their race and of all their tremendous plans! And that annihilation had been brought on them at the last by their own work, by the control that made of their world a colossal magnet to draw all ships toward it. They had used it to draw the galaxy's ships into the cloud, into their world's atmosphere to be captured, but at the last it had been used to draw those ships with all their hordes inside them back to this world, to crash into it and into annihilation!
For moments Jhul Din and Korus Kan and Zat Zanat and I stared at that scene of terrific death, and then, flinging open the great magnet-control again, we were climbing into the waiting cruiser, slamming its space-door shut. As we gained its pilot room I grasped the wheel and controls, and as the generators throbbed beneath my touch I shot the ship upward from that world of awful death and into the violet glow over it, heading at mounting speed out and toward the violet light-points that were the galaxy's stars. The glasses fell from our tired eyes as we swayed there, and again the absolute darkness of the great cloud was upon us; but I did not stop to replace them but held the racing cruiser steady on its course at a speed terrific.
Out through the darkness of the cloud we were rushing almost in moments, so great was our speed; for soon we shot abruptly out of its Stygian lightlessness into clear space once more, into clear view of the galaxy's familiar stars. Even then, though, I did not slow our racing ship, but with Jhul Din and Korus Kan and Zat Zanat slumped beside me kept the cruiser racing straight onward-straight away from the vast blackness diminishing in the heavens behind us, straight away from the cosmic cloud which its people of darkness had thought to leave but which would hold them now in silence and in death forever.